Quote of the Day

by Editor
June 29, 2015 at 9:33 am

http://www.smartertimes.com/1410/quote-of-the-day

From Times public editor Margaret Sullivan's Sunday column, about books by New York Times journalists, comes this gem from New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal: "It's tricky. Books are inherently a commercial enterprise."

That made me laugh for two reasons. First, books are not inherently a commercial enterprise. There are plenty of non-profit publishers, including Encounter Books, the Jewish Publication Society, Beacon Press, Nation Books, and just about every university press, including Harvard University Press (publishers of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century) and Yale University Press. And even at for-profit publishers, plenty of editors are motivated not only by a desire for profit but also by other desires, such as literary excellence.

Second, Mr. Rosenthal works for the New York Times, which at least ostensibly is itself a commercial enterprise. So do the reporters whose books and their commercial ambitions are supposedly so dangerous. Mr. Rosenthal seems to take for granted the notion that commercial motives are stronger in book publishing than in newspaper publishing, a notion that seems less than obvious to me.

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